Candidates lists, 2010 federal election

Lists of candidates for the House of Representatives (in each Division) and the Senate (in each state and territory) were available in e-text, large print and HTML. Audio or Braille versions were available from Vision Australia.

Senate preference flows (Group Voting Tickets), 2010 federal election

Official Guide to the 2010 federal election

A copy of your official guide to the 2010 federal election in English was delivered to every household in Australia. In it was all the information electors needed to make your vote count in the federal election.

Versions of the Official Guide were available for electors with a disability to download from the AEC website including audio (mp3), etext, large print (PDF, .doc). Copies in audio CD, Braille or large print formats, or a CD which contained the e-text, large print PDF, audio MP3 and Word versions were available from Vision Australia.

National Tally Room (NTR), 2010 federal election

The National Tally Room is organised by the AEC to provide a central point for the display of election results on election night. The National Tally Room is one of Australia's largest media gatherings with representation from the radio, print and television media.

The election figures for the House of Representatives were displayed on a manual tally board which dominated the front of the NTR. The tally board provides a backdrop for television coverage of the election and may be viewed by the public.

For the 2010 federal election the NTR was located within the Budawang Building of Exhibition Park in Canberra (EPIC) Flemington Road, Mitchell, ACT.

The National Tally Room was open to the public from 6pm Saturday 21 August 2010 and access was free of charge.

Telephone voting was available in 126 locations across Australia to enable electors who are blind or have low vision to cast a secret vote. It was available until election day, and on election day (21 August 2010).

When electors arrived to cast a telephone vote, an AEC official greeted the elector and asked three questions:

what is your name?

where do you live?

have you voted before in this election?

The official marked off the elector's name and escorted them to a private area, telephoning a call centre and arranging for a trained voting assistant to take the elector's vote. The voting assistant did not know the elector's name, and the AEC official was not be in the room when the elector was casting their vote.

The call centre voting assistant read each ballot paper to the elector – one for the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. They started with the House of Representatives ballot paper and read the entire ballot paper to the elector – this was a legal requirement. They then read it to the elector again, as needed, until all of the elector's preferences had been recorded. The call centre voting assistant then read the Senate ballot paper and followed a similar process until the elector's vote had been recorded.

A second voting assistant listened and watched to ensure that the elector's vote was correctly recorded.

When the elector was finished, the voting assistant put the ballot papers into a ballot box. It was estimated to take around 11 minutes, on average, to make a secret telephone vote.